The Book of the Witch

Shanghaied!

2011-07-06T20:30:00.000+01:00

Why, hello!

The weeks have flown... and so have I. I've been in Shanghai doing some research for my post-The Book of the Witch books book, Robot 9. Why robots? Why Shanghai? Just look at this:


You look at this and tell me how NOT to write about hot robots in this magical city.

Fear not, Book of the Witch fans, White Rain is coming, coming, coming... Waiting for the editorial report at the end of this month... so just enjoying the quiet between storms and enjoying thinking robots before I'm witchariffic again at the end of this month.

In the meantime, I'm cataloguing all of my photographs of beautiful Shanghai now that I'm back home in London. Stay tuned for some great photos of How It Is Or As You Like It in Sydney, and the rumour that I may be doing an opera in the UK soon...

How It Is Or As You Like It

2011-06-01T12:31:00.001+01:00

Hey Frenzied Friends,

My crazy new play How It Is Or As You Like It is on next week, June 9, 10 and 11 @ 7.30pm at the Pratten Park Bowling Club and NO I am not joking. It will rock the hard and tickets are FREE. You want a ticket? Click this link and tell me how many. Bring whoever you like, but BEWARE: this show is NOT for children. It's a black comedy. That means it contains "adult themes", "sexual references" and LOTS of swearing. How much swearing? At least 158 muches.

You should come because it's experimental and wacky and the cast are great and it's in Ashfield. And you know what Ashfield has? DUMPLING HOUSES. Oh my! Try Taste of Shanghai, which is just west of Ashfield Mall on Liverpool Rd, and eat the deep-fried pork buns or the vegetarian dumplings; ignore the mains, this place is dumpling city, man. You will die of delight. DIE. OF. DELIGHT.

Hope you can make it.

Attractive People Doing Interesting Things

2011-05-25T17:05:00.002+01:00

Hooray! The Arty Party was a fantastic success. Weird cabaret acts, stylish folk, a balmy night. There's photographic proof:


See that? It's called "fun".

No rest for this wicked woman, alas. While I wait so patiently for the editorial report to be returned on White Rain, I'm busily using the window before I turn back into a novelist to write a new play (How It Is Or As You Like It, as mentioned in my last blog), as well as teach some classes at my beautiful Thirning Villa, and run some workshops, and so some other stuff. Oh, yeah, like review the Sydney Film Festival (!). Ooh!

It would be totally, utterly awesome if y'all could come to the play. Did I mention I wrote a play? You should come to my play. June 9 (Thu), 10 (Fri), 11 (Sat) at Pratten Park Bowling Club, next to Thirning Villa, Arthur St, Ashfield, Sydney, 7.30pm. Free. All you have to do is email us and reserve tickets.

In the meantime, enjoy these fantastic shots from the Arty Party. More White Rain news coming soon.

Playtime

2011-05-19T06:43:00.001+01:00

So you're all coming to Thirning Villa in Pratten Park, Arthur St, Ashfield THIS MONDAY at 7pm to hear me do a read from White Rain and listen to some opera and cabaret? Yes? Great. You should also plan to come to this...

Click on this and open it out for good times.

Yes, I've written another play. It be exhausting. This one I've developed with a group of long term collaborators - the wonderful director, Travis Green, and dramaturg (that's "script jockey") Jenni Medway as well as some remarkable actors (Simon Binns, Karli Evans, Aileen Huynh, Kirby Medway, Lucy Miller, Abe Mitchell, David Molloy, Joe Parro, Mark Rogers, Erin Taylor and Brendan Tynan-Davey who are in the show and Nikki Kennedy, Feargus Manning, Emma McManus, Sarah Quinn, Karena Thomas, Kate Worsley came to play as well).
It is a VERY BLACK comedy and not suitable for children, but anyone who accidentally acquired a knowledge of Shakespeare's As You Like It should find it... an interesting interpretation of some story elements. It's also a workshop performance, which means the set may full down but it is FREE to attend - and the venue is the Pratten Park Bowling Club, here on Arthur St, next to the villa.
If you've ever wanted to see experimental theatre in a suburban bowling club venue, this is your best opportunity! It's June 9 (Thu), 10 (Fri) and 11 (Sat) for a 7.30pm show, and to guarantee a ticket, drop a line to theashfieldbeehive@gmail.com. I promise, it will be an unforgettable theatrical experience.
If you don't live in Sydney, but you DO live in Brisbane, you can STILL see a play of mine (if not at a bowling club). Bang on the Nerve is getting a production from May 26-June 4 from Underground Productions, and the details are here. AND if you are in Tasmania and can get to Launceston, Bang on the Nerve is also running in the 13th Floor Festival at The Annexe Theatre on the 28th and 29th of May, read about it here.
More news on White Rain to come soon - but YES, it is off with the publishers, and they are standing around their magic cauldrons of editorial goodness to make it supergreat. SO. EXCITING.

xxx Van

Arty Party

2011-05-17T16:03:00.001+01:00

Wanna come to an Arty Party?

The good news is I have... finished White Rain!
No way! YES, WAY! It is with the publishers being made beautiful and then there will be release dates, and then there will be a lot of rejoicing. Well, there'll be a big launch party.
Rather than wait, I thought I'd throw a party, anyway. As you may know, I have this lovely residency at Thirning Villa in Sydney's Ashfield (see blog post below), and as part of my brief is to make fun happen, I am throwing a free, free, free Arty Party this coming Monday, May 23rd from 7-9pm.
We'll all be at Thirning Villa, Pratten Park, Arthur Street, Ashfield.
There'll be some singing from Sophie Webb and the Opera Fairy, Adam Norris is the MC, the Beehive Ensemble will perform a spooky story, there may be a little bit of installation art from Hamilton Richardson Supergenius and I will be reading a tiny sneak peek of White Rain. There'll be lights and a little food and top hats and lovely people, so do drop in. Ashfield Council are our generous sponsors.
And for the theatrically curious...
June 9 (Thu), June 10 (Fri) and June 11 (Saturday - Rebecca Black taught me that, yair), my new play How It Is or As You Like It is doing a workshop season at Pratten Park Bowling Club at 7.30pm, right here next to Thirning Villa. You may wish to send an email to theashfieldbeehive@gmail.com and reserve tickets because some wonderful people are in it and it is FREE. Directed by Travis Green and dramaturged (that's made nice) by Jenni Medway, the HOT AWESOME performers are: Lucy Miller, Karli Evans, Erin Taylor, Aileen Huynh, Joe Parro, Mark Rogers, Simon Binns, Abe Mitchell, David Molloy, Brendan Tynan-Daley and Kirby Medway.
How much fun is that? LOOK AT THE BUNNY, IT IS SO FUN.

In defence of sub-editors

2011-05-03T07:44:00.000+01:00

Fairfax newspapers - who publish The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age - have just announced they are sacking their sub-editors and out-sourcing the sub-editing of their content.

As an author, this worries me. A lot of people, human resources managers and cost-reduction "experts" among them, probably have no professional reason to understand how crucial and vital good sub-editing is to, you know, the transmission of text information.

Let's consider this point, below.

Staff, union shocked by job, losses at Fairfax

May 03, 2011 11:

UPDAATE: FAIRFAX staff is appalled by a management decisions to outsource sub-editing of the group's metropolitan flagship newspapers.

Chris Warrren, federal secretary of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Arts Alliance, said Fairfax Media's decision to outsource subbediting of its news business and business and news and and sports content to AAP subsidiary Cellarmasters, announced to staff this morning, was "grossly misguided".

"It is estimated that hundred of jobs could be lost as a result," Mr Warren said in.

"At a time when Fairfax are looking to invest in the football of journalism and the development of market-leading cross-platform newsy content taking the specialised skills and expertise of sub editors out of the newsroom, is are of them grossly misguided.

An Age staffers were now anxious about further axes.

"Staff are schocked and appalled especially, given the sub-editors haven't even clocked. On yet?" the staff member, said. And then said: "Why would they bother coming or in to work?"

Fairfax announcement this morning was it would outsource sub-editing of newspaper sections of the groups’ spaceship newspapers to Pagemaker.

The move is one of a number of cost. Cutting measures planned for the group's production processes.

"This is not an unprecedented decision. Beastmasters and other independent production horses now produce many high-quality newspapers around THE WORLD,'' FAIRFAX CHIEF executive Greggles Mcwood said in a stuff announcement.

point and we must move now.

"The core of the changes I am announces today are logic-driven around getting the right balance in our allocation of resources in delivering you the necessary outcomes.

"And it involves a substantial reallocation of our resources to writing and erporting.''

“Who really needs sub-editors anyway?”

I teach you how to write heaps good - for FREE!

2011-04-29T10:19:00.000+01:00

How cool is this house? Do you want me to teach you how to write in it?

Beautiful Thirning Villa

This is Thirning Villa, Ashfield. It's where Ashfield Council are presently employing me to write beautiful things for the people of the Ashfield Council Area (that's Ashfield, Summer Hill and Haberfield, and bits of Croydon and Ashbury, Sydney).

It's also where I'll be teaching a *free* drop-in creative writing course for interested persons starting VERY SOON MAY 10 OMG. Sponsored by Ashfield Council, for six weeks, I'll be running a course on EITHER Tuesday nights (7pm - 9pm) OR Wednesday mornings (10am - 12 noon). Yes, free, completely free. I'll teach about storytelling, structure, imagery, action and suspense and I'll even lend you a pen.

All the details are below. Numbers are STRICTLY LIMITED, so if you are interested, let the organisers know ASAP by dropping us an email below. Here's the press release:

CREATIVE WRITING CLASSES AT THIRNING VILLA

Got a story to tell?

Think you have a book in you?

Love reading and want to learn more about writing?

Internationally-award-winning novelist and playwright Van Badham is Ashfield Council’s Artist in Residence for May and June.

Van will be running free creative writing classes out of Thirning Villa, Pratten Park Ashfield for six weeks, beginning Tuesday, May 10.

Van’s classes are fun and dynamic way to improve your creative writing and communication skills, whether you are a novice, a trained writer lacking discipline or just someone interested in exploring your own creativity.

All ages and levels of ability are welcome. Materials are provided.

Numbers are limited, so register your interest by emailing Jenni on theashfieldbeehive@gmail.com, or phoning council on 02 9716 1866.

Indicate which timeslot best suits you:

Tuesdays (night programme): 7-9pm (May: 10, 17, 24, 31, June: 7, 14)

Wednesdays (day programme):10am-noon (May: 11, 18, 25, June 1, 8, 15)

You can learn more about Van (OMG that's MEEEE!) via her website: www.vanbadham.com

... and PS I recently reviewed the wonderful movie, Thor. If you need an excuse from me to go and see it, it is here.

My Night of Terror

2011-04-26T03:22:00.000+01:00

Hi all,

White Rain is almost finished. Almost. So nearly very almost that it's breathing down my neck like a shapeshifting monster with a blood appetite... or an exboyfriend wanting a job reference. Toasty.

Now, imagine this room with a slime demon crawling out of the wall.

The amazing Fangtastic Fiction team have been running Aussie Author Appreciation April activities through their website this month, and they were kind enough to ask me to participate. Which I did, giving an interview, here.
In the interview, they asked whether writing my books ever creeped me out. Having recently experienced the joy of hallucination during my recent bout of swine flu, I wrote up a detailed description of a night I can only summarise as Swine Flu 1, Van Badham 0, which puts into context how very, very creeped out I can get.
Fang gave the account its own page, as it somewhat... darkened the tone of the rest of the interview! If you're curious to know why everyone was making such a hoo-haa about swine flu, it may go some way to explaining it for you. Additionally, it involves scenes of me sweating and calling my mum. Those curious can visit... here.

Remember Me?

2011-04-15T17:52:00.022+01:00

What? I haven't posted since February?!

Clockwise from top left:
Jack Finsterer, Staten Evans, Caroline McKenzie,
Jacinta Acevski, Felix Williamson and Aimee Horne in Swamplands

Easy to do, when you get off a plane from London and walk straight into a rehearsal for a new play in Sydney - in this case, my new one Swamplands at the National Play Festival, which ran in March.
It's quite a departure from working on a new play about the CIA to continuing the saga of Sophie Morgan and her very complex family in my new novel White Rain, the sequel to Burnt Snow. That is, however, what I've been doing since the National Play Festival ended. Oh, that and devising a musical about a lizard (not joking), writing the occasional article and preparing a new play to start once White Rain is FINALLY FINISHED. Book fans, please note that release dates will CERTAINLY feature on this blog. And then I'll be writing the as-yet-untitled third book. Maybe I should open a competition to name it - what would you think OF THAT?

Unsurprisingly, a lot of deadlines has led to a lot of stress, and to calm myself I've been remorselessly feeding myself on this very special Lavender Cake invented by my friend Jess.

For those of you who haven't discovered the joy of lavender, do (unless you are pregnant or lactating, in which case don't, for a bit!). Long reputed for its relaxing properties, it was so precious to the Romans that they brought it with them to Britain, so precious to the Christians that they included it amongst the holy oils used to annoint the Temple and so precious to insomniacs like me that I spray it as an essential oil on my pillow at nighttime when even warm milk, almonds and turkey meat fail to knock me out (it works! Also handy to dab the oil on your temples if you're trying to fall asleep on a plane).

Lavender sachets in drawers keep away bugs, and a visit to a traditional Korean bathhouse is not complete without a lavender bath. Lavender oil on the temples can cure headaches and its mild antiseptic properties make it a good treatment for insect bites or acne if you mix it 1:10 with rosewater or witch hazel and dab.

Did I mentioned that Jess' cake contains honey icing? Trust me - being stressed never had such a sweet consolation...

Here are some more pics from Swamplands. It was directed by Andrew Lewis, head of perforance at WAAPA... and it was the best fun a playwright can have.

Gettin'... Swampy

2011-02-02T22:40:00.000+00:00

Wow. The Writers 4 Queensland auction I wrote about in my last blog raised AUD $20,000 for flood relief. Thank you to the sweet people who bid on Burnt Snow, as all proceeds went into a very deserving pot. Poor Queensland - first floods, now cyclones - they need all the help they can get. It was an honour to take part. Muchos kudos to the magnificent organisers.

This woman is a spy.

Now, a little more news. While White Rain, the Burnt Snow sequel, races towards its TOTALLY SPOOKY climax with snakes, bad guys, knives, even more snakes, magic rocks, shapeshifting, demons, snakes and some more snakes along the way, something VERY GOOD has happened to me.

I have been writing a play for the fantastic Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, USA. I have been writing this damn play for FIVE YEARS because it is about Valerie Plame, the American CIA agent who was outed as a spy by the Bush Administration in order to discredit claims that there were no reasons to go to war in Iraq. Remember that? That Iraq thing?

Well, when I started the play in 2006, the "truth" of what happened in Iraq was a very different thing to what the truth turned out to be. So over five years, the play has changed form, story, characters, content... until last year the dramaturg flew out from Philadelphia and the Finborough Theatre in London gave me some actors and a director and I forced this nutty CIA-agent play called Swamplands into the world. We did a reading as part of the Finborough's annual Vibrant! season... and then I hid under my blanket for a while.

Anyway, I've done some more work on the play, and now a NEW director and a NEW group of actors is going to set to work making it beautiful as part of the National Play Festival 2011 in my home town of Sydney, Australia. Whoohoo! It's a big honour for me to be selected for the festival, and if you're in Sydney in March, it would be GREAT if you could make it along to one of the two public rehearsed readings the actors are going to do on March 16 (4pm) or 18 (7pm).

You can read all about Swamplands at #NPF11 here... and I sure hope I see you there.

Do it for Queensland!

2011-01-17T15:48:00.000+00:00

Hi there. Remember me? I used to be your friendly neighbourhood blogger - but then I went into Deadline Mode for my new book, White Rain, and then I got swine flu. AGAIN.

It is no longer a family secret that my parents' nickname for me is 'Piglet'

So, I've been quiet for a while. But, then, a tragedy overtook all of my concerns about stressing about my new book or spending all my time in a stripy dressing-gown, greeting the postman with swollen eyeballs. Stuck here in London, I've been incredibly distressed to read about everything that's happening in flooded Queensland.

This was how high and violent the floodwaters got. That's a RUBBISH BIN in a POWERLINE.

Now, I really like Queensland. I spent a wonderful few days at the Brisbane Writers' Festival last year and it was fantastic. I've got some incredible friends who live there, and Brisbane in particular is a city I associate with fabulous food and youthfully wild times. The image of it with BINS IN POWERLINES breaks my heart.
Fortunately, some amazing writers who also love Brisbane had the brilliant idea of finding a way for writers (not exactly a group one first thinks of as coming to the rescue when the front lawn has washed away) to help the relief effort.
What Queensland needs to combat a disaster that has affected an area THE SIZE OF FRANCE AND GERMANY COMBINED is money. It needs lots and lots of money to rebuild, actually, everything. That's when writers Kate Gordon, Katrina Germein, Emily Gale and Fleur McDonald had the idea that what writers could do to help was auction their wares to raise money. You can read about them here, in this press release in the Tasmanian Times.
So I, like a GAZILLION writers from around the world, are giving what I can for flood relief. I am auctioning two specially-signed copies of Burnt Snow with original hand-drawn-by-me book plates, as well as a day-long script clinic for anyone out there who has written a play and wants to make it fabulous/maximise its chances of getting a production (I'm very good at this, I'm a theatre Literary Manager - I should point out if you love someone who writes plays, my expertise makes a GREAT PRESENT). Bids start at $0, and you bid just by signing up on the website.

You can start your bidding here.

Please do it for Queensland. If you love books, do it for Queensland - so many libraries and bookstores have been destroyed it is even more painful than having swine flu. And, trust me, that's saying something. Oink! Oink!

The Search is on for the REAL Top-10 Feminist Literary Icons

2010-10-19T18:11:00.179+01:00

Hello! Have you tweeted your spooky story to #31witch yet? You should: YOU COULD WIN my book and a bunch of other fab spooky titles JUST IN TIME for Halloween. The details are in my last blog. But now, on to more pressing matters: The Search is now most definitely on for the REAL Top-10 Feminist Literary Icons of All Time.

"I'd rather be a feminist warrior than a Spice Girl."

My quest for Feminist Literary Icons was inspired by this article, "The Top 10 Feminist Literary Icons of All Time", unattributed and on a site called "Library Science Degree" - which was posted as a link by @emmaguire on Twitter.
I identify as a feminist, in the words of the great Rebecca West, "because I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat". And amongst the fictional women cited on the "Top 10 Feminist Literary Icons" list, I'd suggest there are some characters whose behaviour is, I think, a bit doormatty.
So here, I thought I'd stir up some discussion and playfully - playfully, mind - argue some of this list. Because I love books and I love talking about books, I'm very interested to hear what all of you think.

Here goes.

Scarlett O'Hara may be feisty, but most of her advantages are gained by the fact that she's pretty - not to mention that there's a rape scene in Gone With the Wind the repercussions of which are a literary gift to rape-enablers worldwide.
Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's is arguably fun at a party, but rather than being the agent of her own subjectivity, she's really just another exploited and exploitable young woman who trades on her allure to men; she's only got value to herself or the leeches she surrounds herself with while she remains attractive.

This is the same as Becky Sharp, the relentlessly self-interested protagonist of Thackeray's Vanity Fair; Becky, like Holly, may be smart enough to know that her social value is entirely her sexual appeal, but she, too, is young, exploitable, summarily exploited and very soundly punished by the author - her attempts at agency both defeated within the narrative and met with moral approbation.
That Becky's so wrapped up in her own ambitions, and willing to screw over other women to get what she wants - that is, individual social promotion within a patriarchal society - is hardly a feminist mindset. A rather central pillar of the feminist project is collective sisterhood - competing against one another leads to isolation and isolation to annihilation - like Becky Sharp's.
With this in mind, don't even get me started on Dagny from Atlas Shrugged, one of the deplorable heroines of Ayn Rand's propagandistic pap-tales of relentlessly projected self-hate. How on Earth did she make it on to a "feminist icon" list?! Rape fantasies and narrative motivations to destroy not only collective bonds of sisterhood, but of society and the very notion of altruism are not the attributes of a feminist.
That Dagny manages to hold down a demanding job is one thing, but barely restraining a paraphilia for a railroad (or its capitalist ubermensch proxies) is entirely another - and whatever it is, it's about worshipping domination and it's doormatty. Besides, the very notion of including one of her heroines in anything as collective as a list would have made the poisonously individualistic Ms Rand throw up.
As for Jane Austen's Emma, let's be honest, Ms Woodhouse's interests are hardly the pursuit of agency, intellectual liberty and moral values above bourgeois, material concerns. She's one, alas, of an overwhelming percentage of female literary characters with a monomaniacal obsession with courtship and marriage. It's a fixation that kick-ass feminist babes eschew while they're busy trying to actually do something.

Jane Eyre may not share the singular focus of Emma Woodhouse's obsessions, but while Jane's general behaviour is smart and principled, her attraction to and validation of a misogynist partner like Rochester is an act of self-harm. Loving a bigamous, cruel, undeserving idiot who has married another woman for money, tortured and imprisoned her, gone whoring in Paris and lied to and manipulated you into a false marriage is not a feminist's act of noble self-sacrifice - it is the behaviour of a serially-abused woman trapped in an abusive paradigm.
Now, I love Jane - but the poor woman needs a social care intervention and emergency housing, not the legitimisation of her doormattery as "romance". The real feminist icon of Jane Eyre is not Jane but Bertha, as the excellent Jean Rhys knew all too well when she expounded the wronged wife's story in Wide Sargasso Sea. This is a woman who maintains resistance through the worst ongoing deprivation and degradation and asserts her subjectivity in a glorious conflagration of protest.

These are my six principal objections to the "Top 10 Fictional Feminist Icons of All Time" list. I have my reservations, too, about two of the four characters who remain.
Ramona Quimby is an adorable, sprightly and active protagonist in the Ramona books, but her age-range across the entire series only ascends from 4-10. I'll leave it up to the readers of this blog to determine how much of an icon status her age allows her, unencumbered as she is of the sexual pressures that beset all adult heroines.
Goddess Athene is worth considering. As goddess of wisdom, strategy, justice and war, she is certainly no doormat - but the fetishisation of her virginity is a bit of a concern. If a classical deity were to make the list, I'd certainly advocate the more worldly Hecate, goddess of witches, wisdom and the night. Her remit as protectoress of women, children, the homeless, the poor and the marginalised certainly advances her sisterhood credentials over a goddess who turned a sister into a spider for beating her in a sewing contest.
My Antonia by Willa Cather I haven't read. I will pursue it as an adjunct to my quest - to see if Antonia the Bohemian immigrant to the prairielands can crack a knee to the first Mrs Rochester in my regard.
Of the ten, it is only Hester Prynne, the heroine of Nathaniel Hawthorne's brilliant The Scarlet Letter, to whom I would unhesitatingly apply the status of feminist icon.
Named, shamed, used, abused, threatened, humiliated and ostracised, Hester never relents, always resists, and wears the badge of shame her community literally sew into her as an avatar of her own defiance and identity. She is the counterhegemonic, feminist babe par excellence, her resolution so strong she actually subverts the society around her into accommodation of her uniqueness and ultimately achieves that for which all feminists aspire - a better future for her daughter. So right on, Hester: girl power.

Readers, friends, the task at hand is this. I have consulted the oracles of Twitter and Facebook, and harvested from friends and twitterwes a list of characters worth considering in a REAL Top-10 Fictional Feminist Icons of All Time. I'm going to list them below for your consideration, and would love to receive comments and suggestions for additions to or perhaps removals from the list. When there's something approaching a consensus of worthy nominees, I'll post up a poll for the Top 10.

Some criteria for considering a feminist icon:

either an active protagonist of the story, or an active protagonist of a story within the story
pursues the realisation of values and moral principles ABOVE the monomaniacal pursuit of a man, even if the man hanging around is nice enough
isn't a helpless victim, or a maiden in distress; is instead the kind of girl whose first instinct is to fight her own way out of trouble; who always, always, resists doom
isn't some candified idealisation of popular "femininity" contemporary to the creation of the book
refuses to spiritually submit to a dominant paradigm that keeps her in chains
doesn't ascribe value to herself on the basis of her looks
doesn't submit to a subjugation of the self or submit her body to subjugation to attain some kind of realtionship status with either another individual or a social paradigm

While TV, film and games abound with feminist icons, I'm keeping this list to aural/literal cultural products: characters from books, myths, stories and poems. Here's the list of suggestions thus far: I don't agree with all of them, some are deliberate provocations, but I'm interested in reading discussion. Feel free to suggest other characters, out-argue me on the characters in the original list above or demand exclusions.

Lyra from His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Phyllis from The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham
Offred in The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Moira in The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood 
Ann in Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O'Brien 
Emily from the Emily of New Moon books by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Anne from the Anne of Green Gables books by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Molly from Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell
Nora from A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
Mrs Lind from A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen
Hester from The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Hermoine from the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling
Bertha/Antoinette from Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Bertha from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Orlando from Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Elizabeth from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Lydia from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Takako from Battle Royale by Koushun Takami
Mitsuko from Battle Royale by Koushun Takami
Anna from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Eloise from the Eloise books by Kay Thompson
Lisbeth from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series by Stieg Larsson
Lucy from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Irene from Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Ayesha from She by H. Rider Haggard
Ellie from the Tomorrow When the War Began books by John Marsden
Jessica from Dune by Frank Herbert
Trixie from the Trixie Belden books by Julie Campbell
Nancy from the Nancy Drew books by Carolyn Keene
George from The Famous Five series by Enid Blyton
the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
the governess in Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Lucy in Dracula by Bram Stoker
Molly in Ulysses by James Joyce
Alice in Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Sookie in the Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood series by Charlaine Harris
Valancy in The Blue Castle by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Stephen in The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
Sybylla in My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin
Gertrude in Good Bones by Margaret Atwood
Meg in A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Anna in Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon
Cordelia from An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by PD James
Harriet from Strong Poison by Dorothy L Sayers
Eoin from Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein
Lucy in The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Miss Marple from the Miss Marple novels by Agatha Christie
Flora from Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
June from The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy
Katsa from Graceling by Kristin Cashore
Jo in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Helen in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Alexandra in O Pioneers by Willa Cather
Cordelia in This is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn by Aidan Chambers
Villanelle in The Passion by Jeanette Winterson
Ma in The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Anna from The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
Frances from The Sweetest Dream by Doris Lessing
Iza in The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel
Morgaine in The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Ma Ramotswe in The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
Edna from The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Rosalind from Shakespeare's As You Like It
Amy from Me and the Fat Man by Julie Myerson
Fevvers in Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter
The Marquise de Merteuil in Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Marilla from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

What think you?
Please remember: this is about a love of literary discussion, so no biting! No pie-throwing!

Hallowe'en Competwition: GIMME YO BEST SPOOKY STORY IN A TWEET

2010-10-06T08:23:00.000+01:00

Why, hello!

The book tour is coming to close and OH BOY: six weeks, four festivals, some school appearances, LOTS of interviews and incessant talking about myself later, I fly off to Japan TOMORROW for more lurking around sites of magical activity. Then it's back to London to finish writing the Burnt Snow sequel, White Rain. What better way to celebrate the amazing time I've had with this book than to say LOOKY-LOOK! I'm having a twitter competition - just in time for Hallowe'en!

In my dreams I am actually this hot.

The #31witch Competwition: Concept! Judges! Rules! Prizes!

Okay, so the competition is this: we're looking for the world's spookiest story in tweet form. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO apart from, you know, set up a Twitter account and post the tweet is:

a.) include the hashtag "#31witch" in the tweet (so we can find it). If #31witch isn't there, we won't know your entry *exists*.

b.) be COMPLETELY ORIGINAL (anyone ripping off another writer's work will be professionally doomed hereafter) and

c.) make sure we get it by (wait for it!) THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT, THE NIGHT OF HALLOWEEN! (which is October 31, whichever hemisphere you are in).

d.) no eye-gouging

We have made the rules so fantastically simple so you can devote all your magic mindpowers to composing spooky-story tweets.

There are FIVE prizes. First prize is a Pan Macmillan Australia SPOOKY BOOK PACK which contains an specially-inscribed copy of Burnt Snow amongst a selection of literary spooky treats. Four runners-up will receive a copy of Burnt Snow. All the winners will receive lifelong literary and Twitter glory and the ability to say "I was one of the winners of the Pan Macmillan Australia Spooky Story Competwition" for, like, ever.

Questions I Believe Will Be Frequently Asked:

I live in a strange and magical foreign country. Can I enter the competition even if the book is published in Australia?

YES, you can! This may indeed be an excellent chance to acquire a copy of Burnt Snow without having to mortgage your Nanna to pay postage.

Who are the judges?

The judges are way esteemed. They include ME (whahey!) and a crack literary evaluation team from my publishers, Pan Macmillan.

Can I enter more than once?

Yes, you can enter as many times as you like. Go crazy. Bring on the spooky. There are no fees, charges or obligations and your imagination is given free reign.

What is the history of Halloween, Van?

Well, funny you should ask. What we understand as the Halloween holiday had its origins in the Celtic "Samhain" or "Samuin" festival. In the Northern Hemisphere, the time it occurs marks the end of the summer and the conclusion of the lighter half of the year before the darker half starts - "Samuin" is an old Gaelic word that roughly translates to "summer's end". As a festival, Samhain celebrated the harvest at the end of summer, the storing of food to last for the winter and, as part of this, the slaughtering of animals. Perhaps because of the bloody (if practical) rituals of the season, as well as the transformation of the green summer landscape to the lifeless-looking winter, beliefs surround the holiday as being a time of the year where the wall between our world and others - like the realm of the dead - are particularly thin. The idea that the dead walk amongst us on this day found a cultural expression in dressing up as spooky things to either scare off the scary or blend amongst them. Some of the popular symbols of the holiday have a practical function: the Samhain bonfires were used to dispose of the bones of slaughtered animals, while, obviously, this time of the year in the North is the best time to harvest apples and pumpkins. Mmm... pumpkins.

"Halloween" is the name given to the Christian festival that was imposed to absorb the older pagan traditions: although the idea was to encourage people to worship all the Christian saints as part of festivities of All Soul's Day (on November 2nd), people just liked dressing up and dancing round bonfires way much more than a bit of appropriated ancestor veneration. Consequently, some evangelical Protestant denominations have incorporated the notion of a "Hell House" - like a walk-through diorama with staged scenes of the consequences of immoral activity - into their own Halloween celebrations so their flock still get to dress up in spooky costumes and light fires. So everyone wins.

In Australia, although the Southern Hemisphere holiday should really be Beltane, or May Day (marking the passage of the seasons from winter to spring), Halloween traditions remain in place on October 31 because a.) people watch so much American television here and b.) see above points re: dressing up and dancing round bonfires.

See you in the #31witch competwition. While you're there, there's now a Burnt Snow news, events and surprises service running out of the handle @burntsnow. You DO NOT need to follow @burntsnow to enter the competition. :)

See you at midnight on Halloween! In the North! SO SPOOKY! Suggestions of fun places in the UK to go celebrate Samhain are gratefully received via the comments box below.

xxx Van

Me, me, me, Newcastle THIS IS NOT ART Festival Schedule, me, me, me...

2010-09-29T06:31:00.001+01:00

Hey, blogfans!
It’s been absolutely crazy in my-book’s-just-come-out land. While it’s wonderful to travel the country signing and scribbling and pressing the flesh, there hasn’t been a lot of time to consider the other important things in life – like the rituals of the seasons (I think I just missed the Southern Hemisphere Candlemas) or what to do with a polished lump of forest jasper.

Secretly, forest jasper sustains and supports through times of stress.
And I have been so busy I have considered EATING THIS STONE.

Burnt Snow has been getting fantastic reviews, which is awesome. There’s now a handy Facebook fanpage for the book, where all the press and reviews and an upcoming *fun competition* get recorded and discussed. There’s also a Facebook group called Brody Meine is So Much Hotter than Edward Cullen which you can join if you wanna debate whether the guy in the video promo looks like Brody or Christian Slater does. This group was not actually started by me so you can imagine my surprise/delight/kinda-weirdness when I found out it was there. Remind me to talk about my Dark Half syndrome at some point.

The two big pieces of news at this end is that I’m having my FIRST GUEST BLOGGER appear on these pages shortly; my old friend and comics author Christian Read (who has written for Buffy, Star Wars Adventures and Batman, amongst other works of complete genius) will be donating a piece on Voodoo Queens of New Orleans. HOW FUN IS THAT?

ALSO: I will be attending the National Young Writers’ Festival AND Crack Theatre Festival which are part of the amazing TINA (This is Not Art) Festival in beautiful Newcastle (the Australian one)… as from Thursday, SEPTEMBER 30 until Sunday, OCTOBER 3. So if you wanna see me bang on about: me, my book, TV, literary fiction, me, performance poetry, theatre literary management, me and theatre for social change (sometimes simultaneously – I am so way versatile) NOW YOU CAN! And it's free! My full schedule is below.

Would love, love, love to see y’all there – and if we haven’t met personally before, do make sure to say hello.

Thursday, September 30th

15:00 – 16:15 / Special Event
Festival Club
Launch Pad: Burnt Snow
Did I really think that this would ever happen to me? ELEVEN years after my first NWFY appearance as an angry young radical playwright, I have returned to launch a fun, chunky book about witches and spookiness.
I’m doing a Newcastle/NYWF launch of Burnt Snow for the sentimental reason that it was going to my first NYWF that convinced me I had the entitlement to call myself a writer. Please come join me as I celebrate coming full circle and the 10-year journey that’s brought me back to TINA. I’ll read a bit of my witchy book, answer a few questions – and there’s a rumour of a celebrity launcher guest who may or may not drop in. (Ooh, he'd better).

Friday, October 1st

12:00 – 13:00 / Panel
Crackhouse: Lodge of Research
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Literary Management...
This panel is part of the Crack Theatre Festival and it’s where I put my theatre-mafia hat on and bring out the violin case. Literary Management is what I do at my other job at the Finborough Theatre in London – that’s someone who selects scripts for development and programming and works with writers making their work better. Kinda useful to know about if you want to write for the theatre. My fellow panelists are Chris Mead (who runs Playwriting Australia) and Pater Matheson, who is not only my guru like Master Po to David Carridine in Kung Fu but also the former literary manager of the Melbourne Theatre Company.

16.00 – 17.00 / Panel
Crackhouse: Lodge of Research
Theatre for social change
On this, another theatre panel, I’ll be trying to answer the question: Can you use theatre to make the world a better place? … without cynicism. Hmm. Should be an interesting panel because the discussion of how much of this whacky artform can possibly change the world is certainly older than the Brecht/Lukacs stoushes of the 1950s (“Aristophanes is a big, fat fascist!” anyone?). Good panelists! Brenna Hobson from Company B Belvoir, Jane Gronow from Lowdown magazine and Alex Kelly from Ngapartji Ngapartji.

17:30 – 18:45 / Panel
City Hall: Mulubinba Room
Debate: Free-To-Air Television is for Old People and Idiots
This should be fun – though god knows why I was selected for this panel* – my experience of TV is appearing in crowd scenes at demos and writing some sick-child scenes for a BBC hospital drama. I only watch television to see live sport – but if you want to see a paranormal YA novelist/radical playwright talk about the upcoming NRL grand final with passion an integrity (CARN THE MIGHTY ROOSTERS), come along. The other people on either side of the debate are pretty cool – Zora Sanders who writes about TV, Alexandra Neill who is 9 or something and writes for Good News Week and William Kostakis who wrote the novel Loathing Lola. *I may be deliberately underplaying this because it is one of those comedy “Great Debate” things and I now have a comic persona to maintain. Sigh.

Saturday, October 2

14:30 – 15:45 / Panel
Staple Manor
Vampires, Detectives and Rocket Ships: Oh My?
This panel I’m REALLY looking forward to as it’s about that old chestnut of genre fiction vs literary fiction – and why one side often has a very negative attitude towards the other, and vice versa. It’s been a particularly interesting journey for me writing genre fiction because a lot of people who knew me as a playwright were (hopefully mock-) horrified when I announced my recent Burnt Snow career diversification. Again, the people on the panel are cool: Sommer Tothill, a writer who also reviews for the Brisbane Times; Kate Eltham, the CEO of the Queensland Writers’ Centre; microfictionista Daniel Walker; Krissy Kneen (who writes erotic memoirs, oh my!) and Thomas Benjamin Guerney, performance poet.

17:30 – 18:30 / Special Event
Crackhouse: Grand Lodge
Performance vs Poetry
Okay, so all I’m going to say about this debate thing is that my exboyfriend was a performance poet and I’ll be publicly releasing a lot of anxiety built up from three years of going to events that involved shoeless wankers screaming out nonsense like “I wanna be your dolphin!” during my debate speech allocation. I don’t even care who is on the rest of the panel because this one is all about ME... (although, some rather major poetry and performing people like writer/performer Tom Doig, poet/theatremaker Hadley, performance poet Steve Smart, poet/storyteller Candy Royalle, “drag king/queen wandering poltergeist” Di Drew and theatremaker Laura Scrivano are also rumoured to be involved). If you’ve ever heard the words “I want to explore the tundra of your womb” said to an audience without irony - and no, I am not joking - come stand with me.

Hope to see y’all soon. OH, and do feel free to follow me on Twitter if you’re curious to hear the kind of things I occasionally scream at the television.

Xxx

I had a book launch and nice people came! Wheee!

2010-09-14T12:27:00.000+01:00

Oh, man: I've never been so tired in my life. Check it out, though - this is the scene as it went down at Shearer's Books in Leichhardt Sydney when we launched Burnt Snow.

Book launch: I'm at the far left, the Nice Bearded Man is playing Where's Wally. Photo courtesy of Alison Lyons. Rock.

It was exhausting. Amazing. Exhilarating. For those of you who haven't thrown a big party with a lot of people at it in a bookstore, I recommend it wholeheartedly. Shearer's is truly an awesome cafe and the catering was excellent, so I'm told - I was way too freaked out to actually eat anything.
For protection, I wore my big, fat turquoise amulet. According to the gemstone dictionary, "a string of turquoise gemstone crystal beads worn around the neck (also) absorbs all negativity from the body and mind and helps you develop your own natural powers". I think that's how I survived a room that contained four exboyfriends, most of my extended family and everyone from my best mate from high school's mum, my lawyer, publishers and the Mayor of Leichhardt, Jamie Parker, who launched the book. The emcee was James Beach, who did a marvellous job of extending a long welcome to the guests while I desperately tried to find the section of the book I'd planned to read.
More lovely shots from Alison Lyons:

That's me in the blue frock, greeting the fantastic Ms Hellen, friends from high school, stars of Sydney's musical theatre community, flatmates from uni, my former university students and EVERYONE I KNOW.

A huge thanks from me to Mum and Dad, who wrangled the launch organisation while I was between continents, the Nice Bearded Man (so nice, so bearded), James Beach and Jamie Parker who did the official business, Barbara and Jessica at Shearer's and all their staff, my publicist Louise and all at Pan Macmillan and, you know, my amazingly hot friends who made me look sexy and popular just by being there. Look how happy I am:

Thanks for these, Alison.

If you missed it, don't worry - two more books in the series means TWO MORE LAUNCHES. Am gonna maintain the mailing list in the right-hand sidebar if you wanna get an invitation.
Right, now I'm gonna sleep. xxx

Okay, so now I've worked out the embed thing...

2010-09-06T03:56:00.000+01:00

Hi. Check it out. I've actually mastered the technology to put the promo for my book on my actual blog. No-one faint.

There was much discussion when this was being made regarding the casting of Brody in the promo (for pondiferications on this subject, see my last post). You'll note that on the right hand side of this ol' blog is a poll by which you can vote on whether the promo Brody looks like the Brody of your imagination. I've noticed that he's become something of an, ahem, popular character: note that SOMEONE WHO WASN'T ME started an FB group on this subject.

It's getting weird now. It's getting really weird...

PS ... Am LOVING it.

Published: The point at which it gets a bit exciting...

2010-09-04T07:09:00.001+01:00

Well, howdy! And a big round of applause for our model, Ms Impossibly Nice, seen here with a copy of Burnt Snow in her sweet little hands.

Ms Impossibly Nice holding Burnt Snow

Yes, my book is now not only available online (if you missed the list of online sellers, please feel free to revisit my last blog post, which has a dandy list) but it's also on bookshelves throughout Australia.
I'm learning a lot about this having-a-book-out malarkey - primarily because I've been on my very first book tour, attending the Melbourne Writers' Festival and the Brisbane Writers' Festival as part of the PanMacmillan Australia entourage. This means I've stumbled into a world of festival appearances, talks, signings, panels, author dinners, literary conversations and lots of bonding with the shockingly friendly and supportive world of Children's/YA novelists. Before I do a whole post on this subject, let me just say that if you strike books by Kate Forsyth, John Danalis, Fiona Wood, Steph Bowe, Kirsty Murray, Melina Marchetta, Leanne Hall or Belinda Jeffrey BUY them. Not only are these people great writers, but they're NICE and have GREAT TASTE IN FOOD. Belinda and John in particular - for who could ever forget the bonding had over the unbelievable feast provided by this restaurant? Absolutely noone who ever had the good sense to consult the waiter at European about their tasting menu, oh my.
So I'm learning a lot about what it takes to sell a book to the world. The first rule seems to be CONSTANT TALKING which, though I have a natural talent for talking incessantly about anything to hand is actually really tiring when you do it for three hours at a time without a break. The other great occupational hazard here is Signature Wrist, which is the painful tradeoff for the miracle of avid and enthusiastic readers wanting you to sign their copy of your (my!) book. If anyone out there has suggestions for how I can stop feeling like my writing career is about to be destroyed by tendonitis much in the same way Luke Skywalker's swordfighting career suffered a setback at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, please let me know.
The other thing I'm learning is how enormously hard a publicity team at a publisher's works to sell a book. Whoever said "You don't judge a book by its cover" clearly was not employed professionally in the publishing industry. Burnt Snow's publicity campaign includes an ad in this month's fabulous Frankie magazine, as well as - OMG - a book trailer on the YouTubes, which, of course, you can look at RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.
Have you read Burnt Snow yet? The video promo process was interesting because, as we were using actual human models for the animations, there was a rather heavy discussion around the issue of representing the "hero", Brody Meine. It was an interesting discussion to be a part of, just because it became apparent how everyone who reads a book imagines the characters in their own way - for me, as the author, it was interesting to hear people go "that's not Brody" or "that's so totally Brody" about a character who was, once upon a time, a figment of my imagination. Does the way you see a character get influenced by video promos or film casting? Do you cast actors in your head to play the parts? Are you ever cranky with who gets cast in film adaptations of books because they don't match the character in your head?
Obviously, I am way interested in this phenomenon right now and would love to hear your thoughts. Also looking forward to seeing you at Shearer's Books in Sydney on Wednesday and OMG book launch! Eeeee!

xxx Van

Rosemary, that's for remembrance. No, for a book tour. A BOOK TOUR?!

2010-08-26T13:13:00.001+01:00

Well, hello. Remember me? I feel like I've been away so long I've returned like an unexpected exgirlfriend at an engagement party.

This is me re-enacting The Prisoner at Portmeirion, Wales

Where've I been since last we spoke? I've been to some truly magical places in the UK...

- Stonehenge
- Glastonbury
- York
- Peterborough (ok, so Peterborough isn't PARTICULARLY magical, but it *does* have a good costume shop)
- London (duh, I live there)
- Portmeirion
- Betys-y-Coed
- Carnarvon

... and a few magical places in Japan...

- Yokohama
- Tokyo
- Kamakura
- Enoshima

... and now I'm in, um, magical Sans Souci, Sydney, Australia. Magical because I am staying with my parents while I'm back in Australia for six weeks and we haven't killed each other yet. It could be the mitigating presence of the Boy Next Door who, in addition to travelling with me to the furthest most geographical point from everything he knows, made himself into the Boy Indoors about the same time I disappeared offline. The two facts are not related, although this new and Very Grownup state of affairs means that I'll be referring to him as The Nice Bearded Man more or less consistently from this point.

For those of you who've been following this blog, you'd maybe guess that I've been away from my postings because not only have I been running around stone circles in the UK and Shinto shrines in Japan, but my book, Burnt Snow, is finally coming out. Like, this week. So it's been manic. Tomorrow, I'm in Melbourne for the Melbourne Writers' Festival, and then on the 31st I'm in Brisbane for the Brisbane Writers' Festival. Simultaneously, on September 1, I do my book show on Nabokov's Lolita for ABC 666 (still funny) in Canberra. On September 8 in Sydney, I launch my book at Shearer's Books in Leichhardt. Then I think I collapse. I get back up again, because then I'm in Newcastle for the Crack Theatre Festival as well as the National Young Writers Festival. Links to these last two when they work properly. Oh, and then I'm back in Canberra...

(By the way, check out the amazing Steph Bowe's blog here. I'm doing a panel with her on blogging - yes, okay, Dad, yes, heard it - at the Brisbane Writers Festival. She's written a beautiful book called Girl Saves Boy that would be a wonderful achievement even if she wasn't ONLY 17. Am I intimidated? Like, totally.)

It's all too crazy. I mean, it's MASSIVELY exciting but, sheesh, I'm tired. The book is, fortunately, finding some love in the jungle, and we got its first review 2 days ago. Australian Bookseller+Publisher VERY KINDLY wrote:

FOUR STARS: This intriguing and well-crafted story slowly peels away the layers of normality to reveal a strange yet familiar darkness beneath... Addictive reading... Set aside a few hours and devour this book in one go. But be warned, the ending will leave you wanting more.

The publishers have also thrown their weight into the publicity behemoth, by providing information about the book via this handy page, while an extremely nice blogger called Rachel has a copy of Burnt Snow and is promoting it here. And for those of you who JUST CAN'T WAIT to read it you can either settle for the extract, OR you can pre-order/buy it RIGHT NOW from these fabulous bookstores (in alphabetical order because they are all awesome):

Abbey's Books
Booktopia
Dymocks Books
The Galaxy Bookshop
Infinitas Bookshop
Lamont
QBD Books
Readings Books
ALSO: You can get an autographed copy pre-ordered by emailing Shearer's Bookshop here.

How's that? PLEASE don't freak out if they say the book isn't there yet - the book is being shipped AS WE SPEAK and and and I think all of these guys ship international. Whoo!

As of my exploration into the witch's world... it's actually been more important than ever that I rely on the mysteries of herbalism and meditation, what with the ongoing stress of travel, jetlag and a book tour.

Happy Sleeps

To get to sleep, I've learned the benefits of an easy sleeping balm. In addition to a glass of water (to stop dehydration) and a 15-minute walk (gentle muscle exertion), four (4) drops of lavender oil and four (4) drops of rosemary oil on a pillow knocks me flat.

Lavender was known to the Greeks as "nard", and named in after the Syrian city of Naarda. It was an extremely precious herb to the ancients, due to the relaxing perfume it releases when crushed or burned, and its value as a holy herb meant not only that it was required to anoint the altars in the great Temple of the Old Testament, but both Mark and John reveal that a jar of it was cracked open and rubbed on Jesus' head (talk about bigness of brand association). The Romans named it "lavender" after the verb "lavare", meaning "to wash" and added it to baths. Today, you'll find a lavender bath as a traditional inclusion in a Korean bathhouse. Essential oil of lavender has anti-septic and anti-inflammatory properties - and Wikipedia informs me that in WW1 it was used in hospitals to disinfect floors and walls. Often credited with relieving headaches, it's recommended that you avoid it during pregnancy and lactation.

Rosemary I've written about briefly before, when I made a corndoll out of this herb to celebrate Lammas. From the Latin "ros marinus", it means "dew of the sea" - and is associated with smokin' hot love goddess Aphrodite, as it was apparently thrown over her naked body to cover her when she sprang full-formed out of the ocean. Rosemary is, unsurprisingly, used in lots of love charms - stuff a poppet with rosemary to make it representative of who you wish to attract, or plant several pots of it with potential lovers' names written on the pots - whichever grows highest is supposed to be your fated lover. It is also popular in wedding bouquets. It is long associated with the notion of remembrance, and credited with improving the memory. It is often placed on graves, is pinned to collars on Remembrance Day and students used to stick it in their hair as preparation for exams. Modern science credits rosemary with improving memory when pumped into cubicles in experiments - although it slows recall.

The benefit of sleeping in haze of lavender is well known, but the benefit of rosemary is that it (reputedly) stimulates good and memorable dreams. Like of finishing a book tour without a nervous breakdown...

Zzzzzzz..... Good night!

Book Launches: Not Tors, Not Stone Circles...

2010-06-16T02:24:00.000+01:00

Why, hello there! CHECK - IT - OUT:

Yep, it's my book. MY BOOK. Coming soon - in September, in fact - to a bookstore near you. I can't believe it... Especially because we are still doing something complicated to the proofs, which is the reason that I have all but disappeared from view of late. If you're super-special eager to buy the book, you can ALREADY do that, via this link. The order page tells you nothing about the book, so the executive summary is: A Western-suburbs nerd is recruited to ranks of the popular girls at her new South Coast high school. While she tries to navigate the complex protocols of "popularity", a series of charged encounters with the untouchable school bad-boy propel her into a dark world of witchcraft, curses, ancient magic and dangerous loyalties.

That's not the official blurb, but that's the premise. I can also promise that it offers explosions, fires, storms, animal phenomena, strange symbols and some old-school, high-school bitch behaviour.

Exciting, exciting is that there will definitely be a LAUNCH for the book - in Sydney, that's most likely on Wednesday, September 8. If you want to get a fancy-schmancy invitation to launches of the book, I've added a nifty "google groups subscribe" button just under the picture of me to the right on this blog; donate your email address to this single issue list, and "burnt-snow-events" will get you invited as soon as venues are confirmed. Technology, I love it.

In other news, I've been confirmed as a guest for the Brisbane Writers' Festival now, too - in addition to the Melbourne Writers' Festival, and there are rumours of me doing something fun in Canberra in August/September as well. Ooh!

Those of you who are interested in hearing me pontificate on Jean Rhys' spooky, sad Jane Eyre prequel, Wide Sargasso Sea need only tune to ABC 666 Canberra (yep, still funny) on July 1.

... And, once more, ladies and gentlemen: OMG, I've written a book. Can't believe it... Can't believe it...

So, enough about Twilight. What do YOU think of Twilight?

2010-05-31T01:23:00.005+01:00

Why, hello. Still in my bed, still trying to write my play.

I'm blogging to announce, with no small amount of happiness, that I've been chosen to appear at the Melbourne Writers' Festival this year. Whoo! I'm on a panel with some other writers, and editors and publishers. We will be discussing Stephenie Meyer's Twilight.

If you haven't read Twilight, don't worry; 100 million other people have, including me.

It is a book which has enjoyed immense popularity but there are, of course, people who don't like. I mean, really, really don't like it.

The panel looks set to be controversial (the panel is called "Fading Twilight" - provocative in itself). The spiel for the panel is here:

August 31: Fading Twilight

Lili Wilkinson, Van Badham, Kate Forsyth, Bec Kavanagh, Nikki Anderson, Jeff Sparrow

BMW Edge 1.45pm - 2.15pm, Tickets $6.

The most compelling books for teenagers ever written... or brain-draining, sexist rubbish? Harmless, escapist fantasy that is inspiring more teens to read than ever before... or mind-numbing, badly plotted tripe?

Seventeen million copies later, the Twilight debate continues to rage. A panel of writers, booksellers, editors and publishers discuss the pros and cons of this best-selling series - pushed and probed by you, our Festival audience. Have your questions ready.

(By the way, you can buy tickets here)

Have you read it? What did you think? Which side of the panel would you be on? Looking forward to meaty and honest responses. Feel free to comment under a pseudonym if you fear being eaten by teenagers.

And, meanwhile, back in the Valley of Death...

2010-05-26T17:30:00.000+01:00

As I've previously mentioned, I work at the Finborough Theatre in London. We are currently having a new writing festival, called Vibrant. We have programmed 30 playwrights to stage work over 30 days. My own show is part of the festival on June 10. It is called Swamplands. It is not actually about swamps.

I haven't slept since April. You can probably tell that from the video.

Simultaneously, the final proofs for my book have arrived - these are the typeset pages, as they'll actually look when book comes out. It would be really exciting if I didn't have to read them again.

My next book club for ABC 666 Canberra (that is never going to stop being funny) is on June 1. We'll be discussing Margaret Atwood's fantastic dystopian fantasy, The Handmaid's Tale - a wonderful, wonderful book.

There will be a proper blog post soon. It will be about writing and fairies and Glastonbury Tor and all the wonderful things in the world that you can remember if you actually get a whole night's sleep. Promise.

Out of the Blanket, but Still in the Bed

2010-04-24T17:02:00.008+01:00

Hi there. I'm alive. Sorta.

This is my bed.

This is also where I've set myself up with a mountain of yoghurt, endless cups of tea, a large clock, a mobile, a laptop and a filing system that makes use of the mouldability of duvets.

There's rather a lot going on. I wish it was about the wonders of May Day, which is fast approaching. I wish it was about Beltane, jumping over fires and fertility rituals.

Instead, it's about editing notes, new plays and my other projects. Anyone who thinks that being a working writer begins and ends with some divine bolt of inspiration, a clean room in a Mediterranean villa and an Olivetti typewriter has been watching the wrong kinds of movies. I am not Ernest Hemingway. You are not Ernest Hemingway. Not even Ernest Hemingway was Ernest Hemingway, hence the gunshot in the final act.

The 5 Things That Are Making Me So Busy I am Not Leaving This Bed

1. My novel, Burnt Snow. It comes out in September, in Australia. There will be a launch in Sydney, and some other cities. All of that stuff is being planned now, and I'm coming back to Australia in August to prepare for the launch, do media interviews, run workshops, appear at festivals. OK, so it's a totally fun and awesome (if exhausting) prospect.

What is NOT awesome is having to go through all the editing notes. I lied when I said in an earlier post that there were 450 pages to go through - there are 800. The editing process of my book has gone like this:

- I wrote 50,000 words
- I went around meeting heaps of publishers
- I got a book deal
- I finished writing the book (200,000 words)
- the publishers read the book, we had a meeting about it, they gave me some notes
- I incorporated these notes into a redraft
- the publishers wrote back to me with more notes
- I did another redraft
- the copy editor has worked through the manuscript, suggesting cuts and making scribbles about punctuation, word choice, grammar and some content/meaning suggestions on every page. And I don't mean one or two squiggles. I mean 20-40. Per page.
- after receiving the paper manuscript with her notes from FedEx, I have been approving all of her corrections and making counter-suggestions where necessary, as well as cuts.
- I've FedExed back the first 200 pages, which are being edited ahead of schedule for a super-duper first-part-only advanced chunk of book that is going to book industry media to look at
- the honcho editor (different to the copy editor) is working through my rewrites of the copy editor's suggestions, and making her own counter-counter-suggestions. Then I write back with counter-counter-counter-suggestions. Then she writes back.
- ... meanwhile, I'm working through the next 650 pages.

To give you an example of the correspondence that's being exchanged, this is a sample. My notes are in red. From the Editor:

“Her neck-length hair was burgundy in the low light.”

Van, you queried why the copy-editor changed this to ‘shoulder-length’, wondering what was wrong with ‘neck-length’. I think ‘neck-length’ is a little ambiguous as a vertical guide; readers might wonder whether you mean the top, middle or bottom of the neck. Perhaps ‘chin-length’ might be more what you were thinking of, rather than ‘shoulder-length’?

Hmm. This is difficult. “Chin-length” would be something like a bob, like Posh Spice. I guess it’s okay, though.

Every book you read (unless it's vanity published) goes through this process, this level of detail. Why? Because it matters. It matters that you, dear reader, know whether Taika's hair reaches to her jawline, mid-neck or higher-collarbone. This level of detail is required to make the fictional world believable, else fuzzy descriptions, cliches and poorly-worded sentences cause the literary equivalent of molten magma to ravage your villages.

Do not even get me started on the maps and houseplans I have had to draw.

2. My play, Swamplands. This play is NOT like Burnt Snow. It is not about witches. It is about the CIA and American spy scandals. I am writing it for this theatre company in America, the wonderful Wilma Theater in Philadelphia. When I am not editing my manuscript, I am reading books about the CIA and working on scenes. Which is just as well given that the play is starting rehearsal very soon, for a one-night only preview performance in the Vibrant Festival of New Writing at the Finborough Theatre in London. It is being directed by Ben Kidd, who is very good.

If you want to come along, it's on June 10, at 9pm, and you can book tickets here, and it's only £4. In London, that's actually cheaper than getting punched in the face.

3. The Classics Book Club I co-host on ABC Canberra Radio. Once a month I do something marvellous with communications technology and I chat 20th Century classic books with Genevieve Jacobs while I'm in London and she's in Canberra. Our last book was White Noise by Don Dellilo. If you want to hear the last show, you can follow this link, here.

Our next book, which I have to reread for our bookclub on May 4 (at 1pm EST, ABC Canberra 666) is my favourite book ever, Brideshead Revisted
by Evelyn Waugh. So if you want to talk "the operations of divine grace on a disparate group of characters", tune in, or catch the blogcast: details are here.

Do I sound busy enough yet? How about we throw in a full-time job?

4. Literary Management at the Finborough Theatre, London. I am very lucky to work for this prestigious new writing theatre in London. What I do is: read scripts we are considering for production, have script meetings with writers whose work we are developing or programming, maintain relationships with new writing programmes in London and new writing theatres across the world, scout writers, directors, actors and designers by attending a lot of productions and run development workshops of new scripts. Those of you who may have noticed that I am also having my show performed there for one night in June please note that this was programmed BEFORE I took over the job. Swear.

If you are a writer who has had the play in them removed, you may wish to consider sending it to our theatre. We've championed writers like Mark Ravenhill, Anthony Neilson, Susan Grochala, Joy Wilkinson, Laura Wade, Nicholas de Jongh, David Eldridge and James Graham, and you can aspire to their ranks by following the directions here. We accept plays from all around the world.

Upcoming fun business at the Finborough includes not only my play, but me "In Conversation With" the fabulous playwright Mark Ravenhill as part of the Vibrant Festival, at 9pm on May 29. To be in the audience for Mark's fabulousness, you can book here.

5. My play, Black Hands / Dead Section in Queensland. Actually, the wonderfulness of this event is that I don't have to write or read anything - I wrote the play five years ago, it won some nice awards and finally, finally, it's getting a production in my home country. It's the debut production in the new Geoffrey Rush Theatre at the University of Queensland, and it's about the Baader-Meinhof Gang and urban left-wing terrorism in 1970s West Germany. It's got lots of guns and pretty young people, and if you can get to Brisbane on May 19-22nd at 7.30pm you can see it for between AUD $5-$12.

The booking number is +61 7 3365 2552. You can read about it here. They get the name of the show wrong, but they get the name of the theatre RIGHT, which is always the most important thing.

... in addition to this, I'm working on the next book, and the screenplays of three films, and a TV series and pitching 4 large-cast plays to a theatre company. Because I am dealing with all of those next week... Well, let's just say I am NOT GETTING OUT OF THIS BED.

Back to the witch-world soon, I swear it.

xx Van

Where did the witch go? To blanky-land, to blanky-land, la la la...!

2010-04-04T00:49:00.000+01:00

The witch-in-this has disappeared because her manuscript proofs arrived on Monday... in a packing crate. When I crawl out from under this blanket, it will be to go through the 450 PAGES of annotated corrections and discuss editing marks and why, if you have a book in you, you should see a surgeon more or less immediately. Watch this space.

Equinox, Eostre, Eggs - it's Spring!

2010-03-20T19:33:00.002+00:00

It’s Equinox time, blog fans!

That means that up here in the Northern Hemisphere, spring has officially sprung, and from today – where the night and day are of equal length - the days get longer and the Eostre festival begins. It’s time to start celebrating the green shoots of new growth and renewal and life after a winter that’s overstayed like a food-stealing houseguest. You know what that means!

Yes, up here it’s all eggs and rabbits and chocolate and blossoms and everything says new life! Fertility! There's romance in the air… and on the platform at Camden Town tube station, where I saw two particularly pretty young people having a big old smooch last night.

Christians, of course, are celebrating the Easter festival, and the miracle of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. Iranians are celebrating the beginning of their new year, as are the Baha’i. The Chinese (and their admirers) are balancing eggs on their ends; the symbolic idea being to prove that harmony exists in the world, if the traditional symbol of fertility (the egg) can find balance on the most balanced day of the year.

And in my personally favourite ritual, in America, the employees of the Annapolis boatyards are burning their socks to mark the end of the cold weather and the warmth to come.

Down South, of course, it’s a bit more complicated. When the Christians came to the lands at the South of the world, they brought their festivals with them with no date adjustment. While Australians are certainly stocking up on chocolate for the Easter festival, the symbols of regrowth and new life are slightly out place for the greying weather and the onset of autumnal chill. Nevermind – we shall deal with that in a moment.

Pagans celebrate the change in the weather and the transformation of the natural world with a festival. The deity of the season is Eostre, a lunar goddess and one of fertility, sexuality and, sometimes, war. If the word sounds familiar, it’s because, as a fertility goddess, she's provides the basis of the word "oestrogen" as well as gives her name to the Easter festival. She’s usually depicted naked, and often in the company of the lion, horse, sphinx or dove, and with a star in a circle that represents the planet Venus.

She also goes by the names Ostara, Ostera, Estara, Eostar, Eostra, Inanna, Ishtar, Anat, Astarte or Asherah, depending which bit of the world you're in (or how good your spelling is). Some equate her with Aphrodite the Greek goddess, Venus the Roman goddess and the Syrian Atargatis. Others equate her with Nut, the Egyptian goddess of the night, and Guan Yin, the Chinese goddess of mercy.

Interestingly, the ancient Israelites worshipped the goddess as the consort of El, and the Hebrews in Judah worshipped her as the consort of Yahweh himself. Archaeological evidence for this relationship abounds, as do arguments that the Bible writers, who no one could argue were great flag-flyers for the celebration of female sexuality, sidelined her divinity. In the Old Testament, for example, the prophet Jeremiah freaks out when he discovers Jews who worship her as the Queen of Heaven. As Jeremiah rebukes them, her followers resist conversion. In Jeremiah 44:15-18 they make their case:

We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and will pour out drink offerings to her just as we and our fathers, our kings and our officials did in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. At that time we had plenty of food and were well off and suffered no harm. But ever since we stopped burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have had nothing and have been perishing by sword and famine.

There’s a book on this subject, for those of you who find this stuff interesting. One suspects, on a purely sociological level, that a society that worships around aromatherapy, healthy sexuality and feasting probably has both more appeal and more time to devote to agriculture than one where religious wars and forced religious conversation take up people’s time.

But I digress. Whatever name she goes by, Eostre is about fertility and the delights of nature at springtime. To worship her, or just celebrate the season she represents, is to wander in the greening woods and vales and delight in their new shoots. It is to fill your home with fresh flowers - jonquils, lilacs, crocuses, daffoldils, irises, tulips and lilies - throw a pastel-coloured tablecloth over the dining-room table and flavour food with marjoram and thyme. Buy new plants for the home and garden. And, perhaps the best bit of all, bake cakes and drink fruit juice or wine to celebrate the return of life to the earth.

Research into the best cake with which to honour the season’s goddess throw up both unsurprising and very surprising results:

hot cross buns, naturally
carrot and walnut cake, as carrots are in season
Maltese figolla – an almond-pastry dish used to serve up chocolate Easter eggs
Cornish pasties. No, I am not joking. The crescent shape of the Cornish pastry was brought to Cornwall by the Astarte-worshipping Phoenicians, who came there to trade tin.

As it is the season of rebirth, Titania suggests a lovely ritual for beginning the “new” seasonal year. She sets out candles around her shower and showers with rose-scented products, bringing an actual rose into the shower with her and anointing her body with it in deference to the beauty of spring, stepping out clean and fresh into a new year and a new identity for it.

Celebrating the season with the fragrance of the spring a wonderful way to greet the return of warm weather. For those of you who resist the inflated prices of perfumed moisture-potions and soap-elixirs, remember that it is much more cost-effective to buy unscented home-brand products and scent them yourself. Whether it is rose or orange blossom, limes, jasmine or anything else floral that does it for your nose, try these:

Add a couple of drops of your favourite essential oil in some frangrance-free hair conditioner to perfume your hair.
Add some drops of oil to a tub of generic Vitamin E cream to use as moisturiser
Put drops of essential oil on makeup-remover pads, which are then strewn throughout your drawers to perfume your clothes
Put an oil-impregnated makeup-remover pad into a seal-tight sandwich bag with a scentless soap, and keep in a dark place for a couple of weeks to perfume the soap.
Scent your own candles; light a candle, and when its wax is soft, blow it out. Smear the softer wax with oil, and then let it harden again. When it is relit, it will disperse the smell around you.

Alternatively, there’s another fantastic way to psychologically click into the season...

... A springtime egg ritual!

Go out and buy the freshest dozen eggs you can find.
Sit for a moment, staring at the eggs and consider 12 things that you want to achieve in the year ahead.
Get a piece of paper and a pen, and let your mind doodle 12 symbols that represent your wishes.
Now, hard-boil the 12 eggs.
When they have cooled, use a paintbrush and some food colouring to paint each egg with one symbol.
Display the eggs on your dining table in a decorated basket, and for the next 12 days, crack open one egg and meditate on your wish as you discard the broken shell and eat the egg. Not only a very pretty way to decorate a table, but a convenient snack that’s high in protein, too.

PS For those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, the Autumnal Equinox is a time to heal and strengthen in order to survive the coming bleaker seasons. All the books recommend NOW as the time to mend broken friendships and make amends for past mistakes. So get on the phone before the weather gets old; you never know who you’ll need to survive the chilly days ahead.

10 Things I Didn't Know About Writing a Book Before I Wrote a Book

2010-03-16T15:48:00.008+00:00

Again, I apologise for my absence before my last post. I don't know if you missed me... but my dad did - a couple of days before my last blog, a cute email arrived reading: "Your mother and I have noticed you have not been posting your blog, but you are on Twitter. Yo, lady, what gives?" (he is so down with the street-talk, Dad).

What gave was that I had to retreat to the Organic Vegetable Cave to complete the first re-edit of my book. My book! Burnt Snow! First re-edit! Done! A little Twitter I can justify, but a blog takes - ahem - significantly more focus.

The "Michelle Ozolins" Page in my Burnt Snow Character Scrapbook

Not to mention, I've also started co-presenting a radio book club for Australia's ABC network. It's all getting a bit exciting: you can read about the radio show, and even make recommendations about what we read here.

But to give readers of this blog a thorough understanding of just what's been occupying my time, I present to you a special Book of the Witch literary feature:

10 Things I Didn't Know About Writing a Book

Before I Wrote a Book

1. Getting a Book Deal Doesn’t Write the Book For You
Burnt Snow was sent off by my agent to publishers when it was at 50,000 words; it’s true that publishers don’t need more than that to make a decision and my agent didn’t want me wasting my time. The deal process is agonizing, even if it is handled by an agent. There’s waiting for the thing to be read, reports at their end, meetings at their end, further enquiries, offers, meetings about offers, meetings about your book that you have to go to (that their marketing person also goes to), people come in, drop out, come back again. Money gets offered. Rights get negotiated. Choices have to be made – what they can afford, which publisher you want to go with. And after it all, after the meetings and the contracts and the money and the rights, they hand you a deadline, which comes as a bit of a shock. After all this effort, it’s overwhelming to think you have to finish the bloody book.

2. The Way You Work is the Way You Work: Stop Fighting It
It took Joseph Heller 8 years to write Catch-22 while he worked his day-job in an advertising agency. It took David Guterson 10 years, around the peripheries of his job as a teacher, to write Snow Falling on Cedars. Writing around your need for an income is admirable - and takes enormous discipline. I can’t do it, so while writing Burnt Snow I had to forgo an income and live on my credit card in disgusting poverty because I can’t – I just can’t – get any writing done without warming up for two hours. Sure, once I get through two hours of excruciating, staring-at-the-computer despair, something clicks and I can churn out 1000 words an hour until I pass out at my desk, but it makes working around anything difficult. Knowing how you write and reorganizing your life around it is how you ACTUALLY get the thing done.

3. Commercial Publishing Companies are NOT Charitable Organisations
Your book may indeed be a brave and brilliant reinvestigation of everything we know about the English language. You may have done several creative writing degrees, sailed through your PhD with structural flair and have difficult and uncomfortable truths about existence to share with the world. That’s awesome, but commercial publishers are still under NO obligation to publish your book, even if you’re really, really clever and really, really talented. If their books do not sell, their company fails and they lose their jobs. So when you present them with your book, their interest is in how they can sell it, and how many they can sell. From my experience, they ask:

Who is the target market for this book? (tip: if YOU are lucky enough to get asked this question in person, the answer is not “people like me”, because that equates precisely to 1. You are a unique and beautiful individual, remember?)
Are you familiar with other books in this genre? (tip: the answer to this question is YES, you CERTAINLY should be, because otherwise how do you articulate what the Unique Selling Point of your book is?)
What IS the Unique Selling Point of this book? (they don’t ask this directly, but answering it anyway is VERY important)
What do you understand of the commercial publishing industry? (the answer here is to know that it’s super-competitive, high-risk and with extremely tight margins, meaning that you will pledge to work like a lunatic within the meager resources of the company to make your book successful).

4. Knowing How To Answer a Marketing Question Does Not Undermine Your Credibility as a Writer
Do not, for one minute, think that there is a separation between literary excellence and marketing; literary excellence is marketing. The reason why a lot of talented fiction writers fail to sell a book is because:

They have not thought about their market and can't actually articulate who would read the book except themselves. Not exactly a flag-flyer for a publishing option, this.
They think that their book is so awesome, everyone will just flock to it. This is not borne out by reality. I think White Noise by Don Dellilo is one of the greatest books ever written - and even though it's sold well, and for 25 years, not everyone has either heard about it or read it, get me?
They think they are smarter than the people who are reading the genre they are writing for, and believe they can cynically exploit an established market. The reverse usually proves to be true, as a patronising attitude is rewarded with staggering indifference, from publishers, readers and everyone else.

When you sit in the room with the people who are about to dedicate literally years of their professional life to your project, who are risking vast amounts of money and resources on getting your story out to the world, the heavy, heavy reality of what is involved here lands like a punch to the head. The obligation is to make something fantastic that your market will want to read, and it's the most demanding challenge to your literary skill in the world.

5. You Should Pencil in Some Thinking Time
When I was an undergraduate, I studied English Literature with a man called Richard Harland, who is now a full-time author. Richard came back to the university a couple of times after he left to give masterclasses on writing. One of the things he spoke about was how in his writing practise, he scheduled in thinking time; he would sit in a comfy chair for a couple of hours each afternoon, thinking about what he would write the next morning. Research shows that sleeping on a problem is one of the best ways to solve it, and doing some quality thinking for a defined period in the day will certainly help this. Narrative is HARD. Characterisation is TRICKY. Working your brain properly is the only way to survive.

6. Your Thinking Time is NOT Your Down Time
It says in the Bible that the Sabbath should be a day of rest and it’s advice for healthy living. You can’t and shouldn’t work 7 days a week. Your brain needs rest. If you don’t spend a whole day NOT writing your book, you will enjoy it more when you get back to it. If you live breathe and eat your book 24/7 you will start to hate it and it will hate you back; your writing will become internal if you have no external stimuli, and internal writing is inaccessible to any reader who isn’t you. Whether you take your Sabbath in church, at the pool, or dressing up as a poodle, it is very, very necessary for your mental health and writing clarity.

7. The Printing Budget of a Fiction Book is Actually only 1% of its Total Budget
This is one of the reasons the publishers are so worried about the impact of the iPad, the Kindle and digital downloading on the book market. If the digital books were only going to be priced 1% less than the print version, there’s be no problem – but the digital booksellers (like Amazon and soon Apple) have been trying to drive down the price of new books as downloads as being up to 33% cheaper than the print version. Which may be great for consumers price-wise, but which will lead to a staggering drop in either variety or quality as publishers struggle to make money on books by reducing their main cost-centre: labour. Editing labour and marketing labour.
A good book is as easy to read as it is emotionally engaging and intellectually challenging. This is such a difficult trick to pull off that it relies on an army of readers, senior editors, junior editors, copy editors and proof-readers to get right. Everything is scrutinised; are the characters consistent? Is the door of this room in the same place on page 43 as page 3? You have used the world “sentimental” eight times on one page. This comma doesn’t belong here. We are confused about the motivations of the central character…
This is also why vanity publishing is a risky proposition; people train and work through the ranks for years to become senior editors; do you really have comparable experience? Will your book be as good as it can be without it?

8. Your Editorial Report is Not Going to Fit In An Email
I was offered three deals from three different companies, and went with the team that I felt I had the best “click” with. They loved my book, they were enthusiastic about me. I knew there were fun times ahead.
Then I got the editorial report. 10,000 words of it. I almost fell off my chair. Pages and pages of criticism – everything from the fundamental story structure to questions about characterization, feedback on my writing style and some flat out rejections of plot points.
It’s about making the book better, but, like any recovery, it takes time. I sat on the couch with a printout of the manuscript and a biro and went through it page-by-page. It took me a month.

9. You Finishing the First Draft is Not the End. It is the Beginning.
I’m learning there are lots of beginnings in this business. I thought that everything was over when we got the deal – then I remembered I had to write the book. I thought everything was over when I finished the draft – then I got the editorial report. I thought everything was over when I incorporated all the changes… but, of course, there’ll be another report. And another draft. And then an uncorrected proof. And then a corrected proof. And even when Burnt Snow goes off to the printers, it will not be over… The marketing cycle will just be beginning. And then there’s TWO MORE BOOKS in the series to go. “You know, you and I are embarking on a three-year relationship?” said my publisher. I’ve had boyfriends that didn’t last that long. Oh, my!

10. Did I Mention That It’s Really Hard Work?
I had a burst of inspiration for Burnt Snow – an idea that crystallized into magic, literally. The words poured onto the keyboard in the first two weeks. At the beginning of the story, everything is possible.
But this process is demanding. The story goes places you don’t expect it to, and you have to keep up. Characters develop complex personalities and all of a sudden the thing you wanted them to do at a certain point in the novel they aren’t likely to do anymore. Outside of the actual story and plotting and characterization, there’s all the technical stuff. Is it okay to repeatedly use the word ‘said’? Are there other words for ‘face’? Which is the best preposition for the verb? Is the tense consistent? Is there a tonal shift in this metaphor?
It takes months, years - even with help - to get this right. It costs money in lost work, it costs time in dedication. You have to think in at least 10 directions… and your communication skills aren’t just for the page; they’re for the meetings, the questions, the conversations, the blogs (!), the tweets, the festivals, talks and workshops. It is a commitment of life, for life.
But, of course, this is what I’ve trained for. And I love. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Is that a good enough explanation, Dad?!